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Is the Universe its own Largest Computer?
missingmatterboy writes: "If the universe is simply a giant calculating machine, how big is it? Seth Lloyd, who two years ago worked out the theoretical maximum possible power a laptop computer could posess, has now "estimated how much information the Universe can contain, and how many calculations it has performed since the Big Bang." His conclusion: you'd need about 10^90 bits, with something like 10^120 manipulations of those bits, to express the universe since time began."
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 23:10:51 -0500
From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
To: lwn@lwn.net, editors@linuxtoday.com, malda@slashdot.org, editor@linux.com,
Subject: When times get hard
It hit the papers today that VA Linux Systems is going to have to cut 25% of its staff. The press release, as usual, was bland and neutral,
emphasizing our healthy revenue growth and our bright prospects -- the kind of corporate-speak everybody expects, and that VA has to
generate. It's part of the game.
It's no secret that I'm on VA's Board of Directors. I was at the board meeting where the five-odd people who have the responsibility to advise
Larry Augustin told him what he had to do. I was part of that decision, and it was not an easy one.
I'm not speaking for VA now (I basically never try to do that anyway; it's not my job). I'm speaking for myself. It was a weird, wrenching feeling
to wander around VA headquarters that afternoon, talking with good friends of mine, knowing in a few cases that they were likely to be canned through
no special fault of their own.
What VA is going through now is a sort of ritual bloodletting. The logic of the market is pitiless; when you don't make your numbers, the investors
want to be appeased by evidence that you're doing things to raise your profitability. That means making more dollars per employee, and the
fastest way to get there, the way investors effectively *demand* that you get there, is by laying off your least dollar-yielding employees.
Otherwise, you get what is politely called "loss of investor confidence". Companies go on life support when that happens -- they
can't get capital by selling shares, and that has ripple effects -- it tends to make potential customers bolt. When the customers bolt, the company runs out of money and die. Or it gets acquired, either by a large competitor or (worse) by a slice-n-dice artist who will sell off the assets and shitcan the company.
I went along with the 25% cuts because I understood the possible alternative: no company. And no employees. And no possibility that
my friends will ever be able to come back to work for a company they still love and care about.
I think VA's problems are solvable ones. The company got rocked by the popping of the dot.com bubble and the economic downturn we're in.
But we know what we have to do to deal with that. In order to avoid making what the SEC calls "forward-looking statements" I'm not going
to talk about our strategy or future prospects here; you can go ask VA's corporate-communications folks about that.
But the real reason I'm writing this little broadside is larger than VA; it's about the state of the open-source community, and the things
we need to keep in mind when times get hard.
VA, along with Red Hat, is one of the two bellwethers of the open-source business community. Some people are going to freak out
and think this setback is a harbinger of doom, that it means our community's game is over. Some people, especially at certain
monopolistic closed-source competitors I don't need to name, know better -- that troubles like VA's are pretty common in a market
downturn -- but they'll use it as ammunition in a FUD campaign anyhow. Expect to see Steve Ballmer and Jim Alchin quietly gloating at any
trade-press reporter they can collar. Brace for it.
And, as it says in large friendly letters on the back of the Hitchhiker's Guide, DON'T PANIC! What we're seeing now is entirely
normal. It's the long, dizzy boom time that has just ended, all smiles and champagne and venture capital sloshing around looking
for business plans, that has been exceptional. Business cycles happen, there are layoffs and retrenchments all over the economy --
and this, too, shall pass. Things will get better.
There is actually one good thing for us about economic slumps. During them, IT departments and software users in general feel pressure to cut costs. That makes low-cost and free software more attractive. Over the next few months you can expect to see a lot of submarine Linux deployments suddenly surfacing as managers realize that they'll look *good* on their quarterlies if they cut their licensing and service costs, and as the techies working for them get that message
and fess up to how many NT boxes they've been replacing by stealth.
So the downturn isn't all bad news for us, by any means. We just needto keep doing what we're doing, the best work we can. And when the
economy picks up again, we will have gained by it.
Back at IPO time I wrote an essay called "Surprised By Wealth" in which I tried to deal with how weird it felt to have a theoretical net
worth of $41 million. Am I upset that all that "wealth" is gone, at least until the stock bounces back? Well...yes and no. As a member
of VA's Board, it's my job to worry about our stock price, on behalf of all of our stockholders. So I care about that.
But personally? Nah. I wasn't in this for the bucks then, and I'm not now. Like most hackers, I do what I do for love and I thank the
gods that I can occasionally talk people into paying me money for it. Feels almost like taking advantage of them sometimes, doesn't it?
All the corporate stuff is not, after all, the point -- the point is to change the world, to do better software and give users more
choices. It's been a nice party, but some of us did get a little distracted by all that easy money flowing around. If the slump does
nothing else but take our eyes off those dollar signs and put them firmly back on the work, maybe it will have been the best thing for us
after all.
I bet windows can be bloated enough to suck up that much computing power....
Need 10^10e2000000 bitts descibe sooperior bug intelleegence hooman. Need 10^10e202222022020222222 bitts too describe number bugs in totall uneeverse. More on head of pin bugs than chinese in china hoomans. Not fooleeng anywone big braines. Earth creeturs know trooth. Avereege babee bug smarter on day hatch frum egg sack. How abowt calcyoolate this hooman:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/761073.asp
Always make fun of bug hoomans. Bad grammer, bad spelleeng say they. Always trooth say bug. Not pull punches bug. Always distract, divert attenshun frum trooth hooman. Say now bug: deeg own grave hooman. Everee day a bitt deeper. Keeep diggeeng hooman. End of slashdot out of biseniss, end of life as know it nerd hoomans, end of big battle day onlee bug armee left standeeng.
BUG-SPLAT! @-@
The greatest musicians, most gifted artists, and noted monumental minds in the history of this world have focused their works, attributed their talents, and credited their wisdom to God alone. How is it that we think we are smarter than those who have come before us and foolishly ponder finite material items cabaple of creating, as only God can?